


Burning Bright.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Damien (TV), The Omen 'Verse, The Omen (Movies)
Genre: Denial, Family, Gen, Loyalty, Mashing Up Different Versions Of Canon, Yay WIP finishing!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9953300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: Damien has always been just a little weird; Mark generally feels a little ashamed for thinking that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Tyger by William Blake. I started this when watching episode 2 of Damien. I never made it through episode 5 and stalled out from there. I watched most of the last episode and parts of the penultimate one. In other words: I don't know anything about TV canon, don't understand Damien's tv-canon backstory, and then I mashed it up with movie stuff willy-nilly, yay. In terms of Omen 2 canon... well, I did a rewatch, but since Damien canon ignores Omen 2, I was very loose with what I took from there. But, anyway, WIP finishing! *attempts to shrug and \o/ at the same time*

Damien has always been just a little weird; Mark generally feels a little ashamed for thinking that. Damien got orphaned young and in a really horrible way; Mark can't imagine living with the knowledge that _his_ father tried to murder him. And then Damien got kicked out of school after school after school. They never could pin anything on him directly, but stuff _just happened_ around Damien. Weird stuff. And then Damien ran off to be a photojournalist and used that as his excuse to never attend Thorn Industries shareholders meetings.

It's not like Damien's the first trust fund kid to run off and try to make his name by voyeuring how the other half die. If Damien wants to grow up to be Anderson Cooper, he's welcome to it. Mark's got enough on his plate to worry unnecessarily about Damien; Damien's made it clear he can take care of himself, and Mark believes it with a certainty that he doesn't like to think about too much.

So when Mark's secretary tells him that he's got an unexpected visitor who urgently needs to talk to him about Damien, Mark pretty reasonably assumes that this is about the fact that he's Damien's official Next Of Kin and Damien is dying in a hospital somewhere across the globe. Either that or Damien's been kidnapped for ransom again. But probably not; last time that happened, they'd let Damien go after less than twelve hours. Mark's still not sure of the whole story behind that, but Damien had been grim and covered in blood, and, well, it's not like Mark isn't _aware_ of Damien's weirdness-field and how it doubles as a self-preservation field. Because, yeah, Damien and his weirdness can usually take care of themselves. There'd been that time at boarding school...

And then Damien had gotten kicked out of _that_ school as well, and Mark had transferred yet again to run after him, because Dad had finished his term in the White House and they were all moving back home, and Dad had thought that Damien really needed something steady in his life. And, predictably, that load fell on Mark. It's basically always Mark. The adults can't handle Damien, they never could. Mark'd been delegated Damien-duty long ago. They're basically the same age, so it makes some sort of sense, and they grew up together; Damien's the brother Mark never had, and the cousin that rarely returns his phone calls.

Mark did his stint in the army, got his MBA, and now he's running a company that's been around since 1889, while Damien does fuck-all for the family business, and if this is Damien dead in a hole somewhere, Mark doesn't have time anymore for his cousin's problems. Some other adult is going to have to handle this, because Mark is an adult now and he gets to not have spare time to care about his relatives and the holes they have metaphorically or non-metaphorically dug themselves into.

Mark sighs. Yeah. That's a lie. He'll always have time for Damien's problems. Because Damien has a goddamn charisma-field along with his weirdness-field, and even beyond that, Mark loves him like a brother, even if they aren't as close now as they used to be. It happens, people grow up, people hang out in war zones, yeah, it happens. But it's still Damien.

Plus, Damien is the only family that Mark's got left. Mark owes him. Damien hadn't been the one to grab Mark back from the sinking yacht, but he'd been there every minute at the hospital. And then they were orphans together, for all that Damien had been just a little kid when his parents died and Mark had been in grad school. They'd had that in common. Damien had stood by his side at the funerals. Damien knew all about burying relatives. It had helped. Mark couldn't have gotten through that without Damien. Damien was his rock when everything else had floated away, and then Damien had set Mark back on his path, and then Damien had disappeared again, as usual, to go take pictures. And Mark had lived and his parents hadn't, but he still had Damien, who barely remembered his own parents, so when Damien manages to get himself killed, Mark is going to be very annoyed with him. Mark's not interested in planning another funeral for another, say, two decades.

So Mark stands up and greets his visitor with "what's this about Damien?" before he even sees that it's John Lyons. He'd worked with Mark's dad back during the last congressional run, and he had been chief of staff in the White House. Mark mostly remembers Lyons as one of the interchangeable adults from that part of his life. There'd been a lot of them.

"Mark," Lyons says warmly, shaking his hand. "It's great to see you."

"Yeah, good to see you, too," Mark says, ushering Lyons to a chair. He hasn't seen Lyons since the funerals, but he'd seen a lot of people at the funerals. "Do you want anything to drink? Coffee, pepsi, water?" Mark grabs a bottle of water out of his mini-fridge for himself, but Lyons shakes his head. "So what's this about Damien?"

Lyons leans in. There's a weird look in his eye. Mark doesn't like it. "Are you a religious man, Mark?"

Mark... doesn't like that question. "Is that relevant?" He'd seen someone once slit her own throat after telling Damien that the Book of Revelation said the entire world must cower at his feet. Mark's pretty sure there's higher powers out there, but... well, the kind of devotion that would make someone do that, Mark's pretty wary about that. No wonder Damien is a little weird; he's had that shit following him around his entire life. Mark's just seen it second hand, and his own parents had never believed him when he'd told them. They'd said that he'd been seeing things, hearing things, that Damien didn't really have a trained pack of dogs tear a schoolmate's clothes off with their teeth, he hadn't turned someone crazy just by looking at him. They hadn't wanted to look, so they never saw. Mark had seen, and he'd decided to ignore it.

There's more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Mark's philosophy and he's happy to leave it that way. Damien's his cousin. That's the end of it.

"Humor me," Lyons says and he makes some kind of sign with his hand. It looks similar to the dozens of other secret society signs that Mark's seen in his life, and he doesn't have time for this bullshit.

Mark stands up. "I'm sorry, I have another meeting."

Lyons stands, too. "Mark, I need to tell you about the end of the world."

"Did you hit your head?" Mark asks. "Should I call 911? Lyons, listen to yourself."

Lyons reaches out to grab Mark by the arm, and Mark shoves him off. "It's Damien!" Lyons shouts. "It's always been Damien! And he's in danger!"

Mark gets the entire room between himself and Lyons, who has taken up a place by the door. Lyons locks it with an audible click. Doesn't matter. Mark could get past him, if he were interested in assaulting an old man. This isn't exactly an equal playing field here.

"You know it's Damien," Lyons insists. "All the deaths around him? He killed his parents, Mark. He killed _your_ parents."

Mark takes several calming breaths. "I'm not the Secret Service. I'm not the FBI. I'm not the police. I'm not even the motherfucking Coast Guard. You can take your evidence to them. We're done here."

"Damien's not your cousin. Your cousin is dead. They replaced the baby with the son of Satan, and raised him in the lap of luxury. We guided him--" _we_ , Mark realizes. 'We'. Lyons is including himself. It might have been a slip, but if not, Lyons is in on this, whatever _the fuck_ this is--

\--and of course it makes sense, it makes too much sense, it fuels too much paranoia, too many things that had been cut-off when Mark had walked into a room, too many things that he had only just managed to overhear and then discard as preposterous. Because Mark knows Damien. He knows Damien isn't a killer. People have died around Damien, yes, a lot of people have died, but that's not Damien's fault, and it's not Damien's doing. Damien would stop it if he could. But he can't, and Damien doesn't know why, and Mark doesn't know why, and this shit got left behind in childhood, back at all those schools, and this shit isn't anything Mark needs or wants to hear right now, or ever. Damien is Damien. Mark knows who he is.

"It's way too late to talk about an illegal adoption," Mark interrupts. "Seriously, way too fucking late. You want to sue the family, go sue the family. Lawyer up, we'll drag you through the goddamn mud." Lyons is the CEO of Armitage Global, and, yeah, Mark might be spoiling a little too much for a fight here. But, yeah, Mark's cousin being the anti-christ? It would explain some things. But Mark knows Damien.

If the world's gonna be ended by a rich, well-connected white guy? Mark wouldn't be particularly surprised. But no one's going to come in here and say it's going to be Damien who does it. Mark's not going to stand for that, or any of that bullshit. Damien's got some kind of... some kind of magic, whatever, but it's him being lucky. He's surviving where others aren't. Fuck, some times it's him being _unlucky_. Damien's got survivors guilt issues longer than the back issues of National Geographic, and Mark will be damned before he lets someone come in here and try to make it worse, by proxy.

...What did he mean, Damien's in danger?

"Who wants to hurt Damien?" Mark interrupts Lyons's bullshitting. "You said this is about Damien; who wants to hurt him?"

"Everyone! They want to stop him. We need your help," Lyons pleads. "We need you to talk to him. He won't listen to us. But he'll listen to you, he always does."

They talked to Damien. 

They talked to Damien. 

They talked to Damien. 

_About this._

Mark's not above hitting an old man, but he'll take a pass on that kind of publicity right now. "If you really think Damien is some kind of mass murderer, wouldn't you be dead right now?" Mark asks. "Since you're probably pissing him off and all that?"

Lyons looks away. And Mark... Mark remembers hearing about a guy from Armitage who'd died in the subway in a pretty horrific accident. A Damien-kind of horrific accident, now that he thinks about it. Mark hadn't heard Damien was around when it happened, but it's not like Mark has a google alert set up. If Damien calls him, then Damien calls him. If Damien texts him, then Damien texts him. Other people have to be concerned about the Thorn name. Mark doesn't; he delegates that shit. There's stuff Mark doesn't need to know about.

"Get the fuck out," Mark says calmly. "I'm going to talk to Damien, yeah, but because he's my cousin, not because you want him for some arcane conspiracy theory. I'm going to talk to Damien because I'm concerned about him. And if you try to get past my secretary again, I'm going to have to call security. Just so we're clear."

Lyons nods and pulls his clothes back into place. There's a roaring in Mark's ears, it sounds like the ocean, it sounds like a yacht slipping beneath the waves, it sounds like Damien breathing.

Mark watches him leave. 

Mark considers his office.

And then Mark picks up his cell phone and calls his cousin. It predictably goes to voicemail. "Damien, it's me," he says. "Listen, call me when you get the chance, there's some guys after you. If you see anyone from the White House days, _run_. You have the key to my place, I have the family lawyers on speed dial. We can do this. Together. Come to me, I'm here for you. I'm always here."


End file.
